


i and love and you

by butterflycrown



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-19
Updated: 2013-03-19
Packaged: 2017-12-05 20:41:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/727707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterflycrown/pseuds/butterflycrown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Nick can't stop glancing over at the way Harry's cheeks flush pink every time Nick teases him, can't stop feeling the warmth of Harry's thigh against his, can't stop thinking </i>I love you I love you I love you<i> until it becomes too much and he can't think anything anymore.</i></p>
<p>Or, Nick and Harry and those three little words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i and love and you

The first time Nick puts the words "love" and "you" together and actually says them to his best friend and international popstar Harry Styles, it's an accident. It's almost instinct at the end of a phone call; once, he even said them to the takeaway guy. He just hasn't said them to Harry, and when he does they slip out of his mouth like weights, too heavy for him to hold onto or to stay in the air for long before they crash to the ground and he knows they can never be unsaid. It feels big, monumental, even as Harry says "you too" and hangs up; the words still bounce around Nick's head accusingly.

"That was fine," he whispers to himself, standing in the kitchen of his too-expensive flat and wearing only his pants.

"What was fine?" asks Aimee, wandering in; it is half-twelve and they are both adults and both not dressed yet.

"I think I just accidentally told Harry I'm in love with him."

"Did he notice?"

When Nick shakes his head, Aimee squeezes the back of his neck in sympathy. "Well, that's alright then."

Nick groans and looks at her through the hair flopped over his eyes. "I'm in love with an eighteen year-old, Aims," he says. "Nothing will ever be alright again."

"But--"

"Don't justify me. I'm an awful excuse for an adult and should probably be on Jeremy Kyle."

"It'll be okay," Aimee reassures him, and she helpfully opens the wine cupboard and pushes Nick towards it.

"Harry's not even old enough to drink in America," Nick tells her mournfully (he can't get the low husk of Harry's _you too_ out of his head); he goes anyway.

 

#

 

After that, it's weeks before it happens again.

It's almost summer, the days stretching out longer than Nick is used to, longer than the lines of Harry's tanned neck. When it rains, the pavement smoulders and a heady scent blows through the flowering trees.

Harry decides to throw a party. It's something to fill the empty hardwood expanses of his house, and the kind of party where it seems like the whole town's invited. Nick brings Rita along with him in the twelve-minute walk between his house and Harry's; they're already a little bit drunk and have both spent far too much time in front of the mirror, Nick sifting long, product-coated fingers through his hair. Aimee has stayed home to look after Thurston, which he knows is a thinly-veiled excuse to avoid dealing with the various emotional crises he will no doubt be suffering throughout the night.

"All you need now is a fairy godmother," Rita teases as Nick smoothes his shirt for the seventh time.

"Fuck off," he replies easily, and she giggles, picking her way along the sidewalk in her high heels.

It's not dark yet even though it's late; the sun is still cradled low in the sky, and they loop their arms together with the optimism of children, albeit slightly tipsy children.

When Harry opens the door, hair pushed into a quiff and lips bitten-red, Nick feels himself flush, partly from alcohol and partly from the lovesick feeling settling above his diaphragm.

"Hiya!" Harry says, smile wide and oblivious. He kisses Rita's cheek as she slips through the door and grasps Nick's thin wrist loosely, pulling him in. "I invited all of your friends, too," he whispers to Nick, breath ghosting across the back of his neck. "They're much better than mine."

"So you finally admit it? How big of you, young Harold."

Harry wrinkles his nose, eyes liquor-bright. "Don't call me that."

"Harold?"

"Young. I'm not, you know. It's just that you're old." He leans in again, secretive, and Nick feels his stomach leap through his mouth like a starfish eating its prey (which, he thinks, is either the worst or best metaphor ever).

"It's okay," Harry whispers. "I love you anyway, though mostly for your friends."

"And here I thought it was for my rippling physique."

"Well, that too, I just thought it was obvious."

And this-- this is flirting, there is no other word for it. Harry is flirting and Nick is, foolishly, flirting back. He pushes a hand through his hair and sighs, shoves Harry towards the drinks.

"Get me something pink with an umbrella."

Harry nods, sucked into the whirlpool of intoxicated rich people, and Nick leans against the wall, feeling incredibly sober.

So Harry loves him. That's fine, it's probably the same way he loves everyone when he's drunk.

If it isn't, though, if it's different, then Nick will probably have to book a flight to Argentina as soon as possible, to flee the country before he does anything as irrevocably fucking stupid as making Harry fall for him in the same way he's fallen for Harry.

(He never gets his pink, umbrella'd drink after all).

 

#

 

Then, it becomes normal, every time Nick has a morning meeting and Harry mumbles a half-awake goodbye from the couch, every time they hang up the phone or turn different directions at the corner leading to Primrose Hill, shouting the word "love" after each other like it's a dragon that has to be vanquished before it rips out their lungs.

It's there every time they go to a movie together or grocery shopping, Harry buying him pink, heart-shaped cookie cutters (to impress Finchy the next time they have to bake) and Nick buying Harry _Love in the Time of Cholera_ because it's the kind of intellectual shit he sometimes enjoys.

And Harry does, Harry does enjoy it; Harry sits on Nick's kitchen counter, knees pulled up to his chest, and quotes lines from it while Nick cooks them dinner, vainly trying to ignore him and his goddamn curls and the fact that he can actually cook but always makes Nick do it. It's frighteningly domestic in a very arousing way, actually.

"He calculated the height and thought that if he climbed two rungs he would be able to catch the parrot," Harry reads, voice thick and languid and _sexual_ , and when Nick sputters with the unfairness of it all, Harry finally looks up.

"What?" he asks, and Nick says, "Just imagining you trying to catch a parrot, with your shit balance," but thinks, _I'm in love with you_.

 

#

 

"I want my two best friends to be best friends too," Harry insists, shining green eyes unusually serious; he grins, then, breaking the illusion. "That was like a riddle."

They're sitting in Nando's, knees knocking together every time Nick nervously shifts his weight from side to side, and Harry is pleading with him to _act cool_ and Nick is pointing out that _he'd_ be _fucking cool if it wasn't forty fucking degrees outside_ and Harry is running a soothing thumb over the back of his hand while they wait for Louis and Niall. It feels, oddly, like meeting the parents, which is dumb because Nick's met them loads of times before and it's not like him and Harry are together _romantically_ or anything, it's just Harry's version of a play date or something.

"We do get along, you know!" Nick protests, because they do; Niall loves him, at least, even though he knows it's not Niall that Harry's talking about, and he's just here to break the tension.

"That just means you're polite, not that you actually like each other."

Harry's looking at him in the passionate, open way that Nick can never say no to, Nick's t-shirt hanging loose around his shoulders, Nick's cologne splashed across his neck.

"Okay," Nick mumbles petulantly, "I'll try to like him."

Harry beams, immediately brightening as Louis and Niall walk in. His hand is still covering Nick's, warm and heavy, and Nick can almost feel Louis' eyes boring through their bones.

Just as they sit down, Harry jumps up and grabs Niall by the shoulders. "The usual, right boys?" he says, pushing Niall towards the till, and when Louis nods he winks at Nick (which, fuck his _life_ ) and heads off to order the food, unsubtly leaving Louis and Nick alone together.

Well, if Harry thinks they're going to magically bond, he's wrong. Nick pulls out his phone for a quick game of Temple Run, determined not to make eye contact.

"Nick," Louis says. Nick stiffens and looks up. "I know you're in love with him."

Shit.

Nick decides to try feigning innocence, because he has definitely had nightmares about this very situation. Louis can be scary when it comes to Harry.

"Who?"

Louis laughs at that, a real laugh, and Nick nervously chuckles along with him, furtively hoping that a fire breaks out in the kitchen or something.

"You know who. And Nick-- look at me, god, you're like a skittish animal. I'm fine with it, you know."

Nick's shoulders relax incrementally and he raises his eyebrows, softening the push of his fingers into the rough wooden table.

"Really?"

There's a pause before Louis nods. "Really. But he's young, and sometimes stupid, and I need you to promise me you won't break his heart."

"I'd need to have his heart in order to break it," Nick points out drily.

Louis' eyes flick from his hands back to Nick's face; he rubs the bridge of his nose. "That's just it, Grimmy. He's in love with you, too, which you probably should have noticed by now because it's bloody obvious-- he's in love with you, so please just do something about it that won't end in tears and a drunken Harry Styles showing up at my door."

Nick absently reconsiders the emergency flight to Argentina, considers the way Harry's stuff is scattered across his flat like he lives there, the way they're both number two on each other's speed dials, the way Harry's fingers look wrapped around the soft cuffs of Nick's sweaters.

"I promise I won't break his heart," he says slowly, and Louis smiles.

"Good."

When Harry and Niall come back, arms loaded with chicken and fries and cheap wine, Nick and Louis are silent but there's a definite bonding sensation settling over them, and Harry launches himself in next to Nick, slings a laddish arm around his shoulder.

"We all good?" he whispers, nose bumping the back of Nick's neck. Nick sucks in a sharp breath and miraculously manages to have enough motor control to nod and watch the way Harry's dimples blossom as he grins.

 

#

 

The next day, Aimee drags Nick to the yoga class she had signed up for with her ex-boyfriend. Nick knows he's going to be awful at it and unsurprisingly is, sweat slicking his hair to his forehead while he grunts his way through the poses.

"I'm gone this weekend," she whispers, "so you and Harry can have the house to yourself if you dogsit Thurston. You could tell him then."

"Tell him?!"

"You know, the whole _in love_ thing. I expect you'll want an empty house for all the post-confession sex."

"But this weekend, that's so _soon_!"

The instructor glares at them and they shut up, Nick huffing out short breaths as he thinks about it. It's not as simple as just saying it; there's the age difference, and the gay-in-a-boyband thing, and so much between them to fuck up, and the distinct possibility that this is all one of Louis' practical jokes and Harry's never been in love with him, a thought that makes Nick want to punch Louis in the face (and himself, for good measure). It makes him feel like he's drowning in something thick and milkshakey.

 

#

 

That Saturday Nick decides to reorganize his records by colour; he forces Harry to help him because Harry has young eyes and will be able to pick out all the different hues. Harry rolls his eyes but sits cross-legged on the floor next to him, beanie pulled over his curls, drinking the sugary vanilla tea that Nick only buys because Harry likes it. He mocks Nick mercilessly about his music taste and pulls out his phone every ten minutes to play him some slow indie song that apparently represents _good music_ but just makes Nick's heart get a little bit softer and a little bit more crippled.

"Strong choice," Nick says when the xx starts to play, but he wrestles the phone out of Harry's grasp anyway, rolling across the floor to get away as Harry's surprised laughter follows him.

They try to cook up a stir fry for lunch but don't have any of the ingredients so they just order takeaway instead, and they sit on the couch sharing a curry and watching _The Jeremy Kyle Show_ and giggling and Nick can't stop glancing over at the way Harry's cheeks flush pink every time Nick teases him, can't stop feeling the warmth of Harry's thigh against his, can't stop thinking _I love you I love you I love you_ until it becomes too much and he can't think anything anymore.

 

#

 

Nick wakes up at 2 a.m. and pads into the living room, leans against the doorframe and watches the teenager sleeping on his couch. A quilt is pulled up over Harry's bare arms, not high enough to cover the dark tattoos scattering his body. He looks younger when he's asleep, no age behind his eyes or height in his curved shoulders. He looks smaller, too, like Nick could pick him up and cradle him in one palm.

Harry's chest rises and falls, rises and falls. His eyelashes flutter as he blinks awake, eyes startlingly clear as he stares at Nick through the dark.

"You alright?" he asks. His voice is raspy and low with sleep.

The thing is, Nick's never told anyone he loved them, romantically, before. It had never seemed important.

It seems important now.

"I'm in love with you," he says, suddenly, and Harry rubs his eyes with a fist.

"You are?"

Nick nods, runs a hand through his hair and steps forward with shaky legs. "Fucking besotted."

"Same for me."

"Yeah?"

Harry nods, barely visible in the moonlight, necklace bouncing between his collarbones, and it's probably the most rubbish confession of love in the history of boybanders and their aging DJ best friends, but it's still pretty perfect.

Nick keeps coming towards him until his knees hit the edge of the couch, and then climbs under the quilt to slot behind Harry on the couch, their entire bodies pressed together.

"Are we going to do this then?" he asks, lips brushing against the nape of Harry's neck. He feels Harry shudder against him and pulls his hips around until they're facing each other, Harry's pupils already blown dark and hungry.

"Fuck, yes," he murmurs, and Nick lets himself smile, finally, lets himself hold Harry in his arms. When their lips meet, sleepy and messy, it's the exact kiss that Nick would expect from Harry, and that makes it pretty perfect too.

"I love you," Harry says, their lips bumping together with every word, and Nick gets to say what he's wanted to ever since Harry said it to him, weeks or maybe months ago, when he felt like his world was irrevocably broken and nothing (but this, _this_ ) could make it whole again.

"You too."

**Author's Note:**

> This is entirely fictional and I am not profiting from it in any way.
> 
> Set during the summer of 2012. Apologies for any inaccuracies or Canadianisms (is that a thing?).
> 
> Title is from the song "I And Love And You" by The Avett Brothers.


End file.
